Fulbright Fiasco: Has the Indian Government Been Censoring Controversial Research Topics?
U.S. Academics Who Experienced Delays Believe It May Amount to Censorship
May 30, 2007
By DAN LEVIN
Over the past two years, scores of American Fulbright scholars seeking to do research in India have been thwarted in their efforts by long delays and rejections. Both Indian and American academics have blamed the Indian government for the problems, claiming the delays and rejections of controversial topics, including Islam and women's rights, amount to censorship. And despite diplomatic efforts to clear the backlog, some worry that the problems will continue.
"Everyone knows that certain topics are blacklisted," Jeff Redding, a research fellow at Yale Law School told ABC News. Redding, a Fulbright scholar, had to return to the United States to find work while waiting to hear if his Fulbright research proposal on Islamic law was accepted. Seven months later, he learned in an e-mail that his topic had been rejected. No explanation was provided.
Redding said he reapplied with a new topic, omitting any mention of Islam and had to wait another seven months before he finally gained clearance. "It's not what I prefer to be working on," he said of the new topic, adding that he is not sure when he will actually be able to go back to India, because he now has a full-time job at Yale.
Criticizing the Indian government for basing approvals on content, Pratap Bahnu Mehta, the director of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former visiting professor of government at Harvard University, wrote in a February op-ed for the national Indian Express newspaper, saying: "Patriotism may or may not be the last refuge of scoundrels. But security-based arguments are often the last refuge of those who want to control for the sake of control. There is something wrong when universities have to seek permission from the government on a routine basis to get clearance for researchers."
Some academics affected by the backlog of pending research projects have given up. Others had to do their research without the Indian government's approval. Sarah Mehta quit her job and delayed law school to study Muslim women's education in India, but her research visa was denied, leaving her distraught and desperate.
"When I tried to reapply, Fulbright told me that I needed to change my topic if I wanted to get clearance," she said. Unwilling to do that, she was forced to forgo the Fulbright grant money and do field work in India secretly. "I didn't want to lie about what I was researching," said Mehta, now a student at Yale Law School. "Despite the lack of funds and Fulbright affiliation, I got to do truly spectacular work with great organizations and am writing up my research now for a law class."
But not all academics have the money or time to pursue their scholarly interests independently. In 2006, only 17 out of 94 Fulbright scholars gained clearance for their research within six months of applying, and a majority of the remaining applicants were forced to wait up to ten months, according to the United States Educational Foundation in India, which administers the program there.
Recently, said American diplomatic officials, the last 10 scholars who applied a year ago learned of their visa status. This happened, they said, just weeks before a delegation of American university and college presidents led by Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, arrived in India to discuss higher education issues in late March.
Even before the delegation meeting, diplomats at the highest levels of government were working to address what Larry Schwartz, public affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi termed these "censorship efforts." In November, Schwartz accompanied David Mulford, the American ambassador, to meetings with Indian officials to remedy the backlog problem. "He was really pissed off about the whole thing," Schwartz told ABC News. Then, in December, several academics sent a letter of protest to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging action.
The diplomacy seems to have worked, as no applications from the 2006-2007 year are waiting for review.
"We want more American scholars studying in India," Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department told ABC News. "The backlog was cleared due in large part to American foreign affairs and government officials talking very seriously with Indian decision makers outside the normal midlevel channels and bureaucracy."
To address this backlog and avoid further diplomatic embarrassment, the Indian government has created a committee of ministers who will meet monthly to review proposed research topics in the hopes of streamlining the application process. "We are a 3,000-year-old civilization, with our own sensitivities," said Rahul Chhabra, a press officer at the Indian Embassy in Washington, "and sometimes the process can fall into slow motion, but the government has taken collective action, and the committee has been granted full authority to clear cases."
While every 2006-2007 Fulbright scholar has finally heard about their research visa status, American diplomatic officials are watching the current round of applications with cautious optimism.
According to Farrell, 21 of the 69 Fulbright applications submitted for the 2007-2008 academic year have already been approved, with all but two of those receiving approval within three months and no rejections so far.
"We're looking at this very seriously," said Farrell, adding that he hopes there will be no more problems in the future.
The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi is sending letters to all applicants, notifying them of the Indian government's promise to issue clearance notices within three months of applying, and that if Fulbright scholars do not hear within that time, they should alert the embassy, which will then offer them the choice of location reassignment and also take further diplomatic action.
"I think the Indian government is making a good faith effort in changing its policy," said Schwartz, "but the bottom line is that every application needs to be cleared before August because that's when American Fulbright scholars need to leave for India, and they deserve that respect."